Full Name: Emma Grace
Frost
Aliases:
White Queen
Place of Birth: Boston, Massachusetts. USA
Height: 5'10"
Weight: 144 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Ash blonde
Genetic Mutations: In her
youth, Emma manifested various telepathic abilities. She is able to read and
influence the thoughts of others; project psionic force bolts, which have no
physical effects, but can affect a victim's mind so as to cause the victim pain
or unconsciousness; release her astral form in order to leave her own physical
body and possibly enter others' under certain circumstances; induce mental pain
on contact with the brow of a victim; and telepathically sedate others so that,
if already rendered unconscious, they remain so for as long as she continues her
telepathic sedation. Following an extremely traumatic incident in adulthood
(survival of the Genoshan Holocaust where over 16 million mutants parished), her
body has manifested the ability to assume an organic diamond state that is
virtually indestructable (except for a flaw), but she is without any of her
telepathic abilities so long as she remains in this alternate physical
state.
Skills:
Emma is highly-skilled in electronic theory and electronics, and has developed
complex equipment which can amplify psionic energies. Physically, she is an
above-average athlete with some training in hand-to-hand combat.
Physical Strength: She
possesses the normal human strength for a woman of her age, height, and build
who engages in moderate regular exercise.
Legal
Status: Citizen of the United States of
America, no criminal record
Marital
Status: Single
Known Relatives: Winston
Frost (father), Hazel Frost (mother), Christian Frost (brother), Cordelia Frost
(younger sister), Adrienne Frost (older sister, deceased), Steven
(brother-in-law, deceased), Jocasta (cousin)
Education: College Degree in
Business Administration
Occupation: Instructor and
Substitute Headmistress at the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning; member of
the X-Men, public activists for Mutants Rights; Chairwoman of the Board and
Chief Executive Officer of Frost International.
Previous Occupations:
Headmistress of Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (Generation X) in Snow
Valley, MA.; Headmistress and Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees at the
Massachusetts Academy in Snow Valley, MA.; White Queen (co-leader) of the Inner
Circle at the New York branch of the Hellfire Club, an elite social organization
of the world's wealthy and powerful figures.
Place
of Residence: Xavier Institute for Higher
Learning (1407 Greymalkin Lane, Salem Center, NY. 10274); additional places of
residence in various cities where Frost International has holdings.
Previous Places of Residence:
A home near the Massachusetts Academy in the Berkshire Mountains of Snow Valley,
MA.; homeless in the streets of New York, NY. during her teens; the Frost Family
Residence in Boston, MA. during childhood and early teens.
Emma Grace
Frost was born the second of three daughters, with older-sister Adrienne and
younger sister Cordelia, into a Boston mercantile family that arrived from
England in the 1600s. She also had a brother with an artistic temperament named
Christian, a substance abuser who eventually went insane. The three girls were
very close, but they all manifested their mutations upon reaching puberty; it
was then that Emma first encountered her own telepathic abilities.
As a descendant of the early New England upper-class, who considered themselves the first American aristocracy, Emma's father despised Christian. Naturally, he was out of the question when they were choosing an heir to the family fortune. Much to the surprise of the others, Emma was chosen, despite being considered the rebellious child of the family. Emma, however, refused to accept it and left home with the determination to make her own way instead. She ventured into the streets of New York with her entire fortune consisting of 400 dollars.
Emma became one of many homeless people in the streets of New York, but she soon ended this uncharacteristic period of her life by taking advantage of her genetic gifts. Using her telepathy, she had little trouble stealing expensive dresses and faking invitations to the parties of Manhattan's society. With her natural drive, intelligence, personal charm, and of course the continued use of her psionic abilities, she gained inside knowledge by remaining among many of Wall Street's elite, and quickly moved up the ladder in the business world.
At one of the parties, Emma met a man named Harry Leland, who she felt would eventually become useful to her. That night, she left the party having completely exhausted her telepathy, only to encounter a group of bullies on the street who wanted to take advantage of the beautiful teenager. Coming to her aid was the Dark Beast, an alternate timeline counterpart of the geneticist named Doctor Henry McCoy, from the Age of Apocalypse (a parallel universe in which the Egyptian-born Darwinist, En Sabah Nur, controlled the continent of North America). The Dark Beast's journey into reality left his mind fractured and partially amnesiac, remembering only that he had performed some experiments and was trying to do the same in the sewers of the city. Emma agreed to help him by telepathically restoring his mind, and also build him a new laboratory with her growing fortune.
Eventually, Emma became majority stockholder of Frost International, a company that was principally involved in electronics and transportation; both the building of ships and aircrafts, and their use for freight and passenger transport. Despite her relative youth, she was named Chairwoman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. She also became Headmistress and Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees at the Massachusetts Academy, a college preparatory school for students between the 7th and 12th grades, located in the Berkshire Mountains in Snow Valley, Massachusetts. For convenience, she soon bought a property near the school where she resided for a number of years.
Emma's success, and her
connections, caught the attention of the Hellfire Club, an elite social
organization consisting of the world's wealthy and powerful figures. When the
club was hiring dancers, she promptly auditioned and used her telepathic talents
to enhance her performance in their eyes. Unlike many other women, Emma was
never uncomfortable with the club's strict dress code - which requires that
female members wear lingerie at all times. She wore a white corset and panties,
with thigh-high white boots, opera gloves and a fur-trimmed cape. She always
considered her revealing wardrobe a weapon in her arsenal, giving her an instant
advantage when men would be distracted and immediately underestimated her. To
top off her image, she also underwent cosmetic surgery.
In the Hellfire Club, Emma met a fellow club member and mutant, Sebastian Shaw. With her rising status in the business world, and Sebastian aspiring to expand his own power through both economical and political means, neither of them were satisfied with a mere membership, even in such a prestigious organization. The leaders of the Hellfire Club were known as the Council of the Chosen, who held titles that corresponded to the names of chess pieces: the White King was Ned Buckman at the time, and the White Queen was Paris Seville. At first, Sebastian attempted to buy his way into the council by helping to fund Buckman's Project Armageddon, but he was unaware of Buckman's intentions to use the Sentinels to commit genocide on mutantkind, and Buckman was also unaware of Sebastian's own genetic disposition. When Sebastian's lover, Lourdes Chantel, was murdered by one of the Sentinels, he and Emma attacked the Council of the Chosen - not only for their ambition but also for vengeance. Emma took control of Buckman's mind and forced him to shoot all the other members of the council, including Paris Seville, and finally himself as well. That night, Sebastian Shaw took the title of Black King and Emma Frost became the White Queen. They renamed the council to the Inner Circle. The mutant-dominated era of the Hellfire Club began, as they filled the other positions with friends like Harry Leland and Donald Pierce.
In order to strengthen the club's power base, Emma began recruiting young mutants and helped them to hone their abilities at her Massachusetts Academy. Upon graduation, they would become members of a group called the Hellions, young operatives that would serve the interests of the Hellfire Club with the White Queen herself as their mentor. Their first major roadblock came in the form of Emma's first encounter with the X-Men - an outlaw band of crusaders for peace between mutants and humans, founded by the wealthy Professor Charles Francis Xavier. Xavier is also a telepath, often considered the most powerful in the world. With a device called Cerebro, he similarly recruited young mutants to attend his School for Gifted Youngsters in Westchester County, New York. In an attempt to gain an upper-hand on the competition, the Hellfire Club planted a bug at Xavier's mansion, so that when Cerebro alerted Xavier of new mutant signatures, the club would receive the notification as well.
Meanwhile, Jason Wyngarde (Mastermind) claimed to be able to seduce a member of the X-Men known as the Phoenix, and make her into the new Black Queen of the Inner Circle. The Phoenix was in fact a clone of the X-Man named Jean Grey, a telepath who neared death from radiation poisoning when the cosmic entity called the Phoenix Force spared her life and took her place among the X-Men. She was believed by others to be the real Jean Grey herself, but was in fact far more powerful than any other mutant the world had seen. The real Jean Grey was placed in suspended animation at the bottom of Jamaica Bay off the coast of New York. All that was significant to the Hellfire Club, however, was that Wyngarde claimed to be able to acquire the Phoenix, so he was given a conditional membership in the Inner Circle. Putting her electronics expertise to use, Emma designed a mindtap device that would allow Wyngarde to perfectly match his illusions to Phoenix's innermost fantasies. He slowly wormed his way through Phoenix's head over long weeks.
In competition with Xavier for the recruitment of young mutants, Emma beat the X-Men to Chicago and offered the parents of a girl named Kitty Pryde to have their daughter educated at the Massachusetts Academy. When the X-Men finally arrived, Xavier himself talked with the Prydes, while three of the X-Men took Kitty to a nearby mall. Emma and her forces ambushed them, but Kitty escaped, and it came down to a telepathic struggle between Emma and Phoenix, which ultimately ended with Emma overpowered by the clone of miss Grey, and the building crashed in on her.
The X-Men encountered the Hellfire Club on a number of occassions since. When Emma fully recovered, and Jean Grey was believed to have committed suicide, Emma telepathically forced the Prydes to transfer Kitty to her school. Since Kitty was a minor, the X-Men member Ororo Munroe (Storm) agreed to drive Kitty to the Massachusetts Academy. The incident culminated in a battle between Storm and the White Queen in which Munroe was ready to end Emma's life. Her fellow X-Men members prevented her from doing so, and instead made Emma agree to leave Kitty alone from that day forward. The agreement didn't apply to other young mutants, however, as Emma went on to successfully beat Xavier in the race to contact Angelica Jones (Firestar) and enlisted her in the Massachusetts Academy. Angelica was separated from other students when Emma saw a higher power potential in her.
Jason Wyngarde, having failed in his attempt to control the Phoenix and thus remain a member of the Inner Circle, blamed others for his own failures. He attacked Emma in a personal revenge mission against her, as well as the X-Men and the shapeshifter, Raven Darkholme (Mystique). Likely blaming Emma's mindtap device for his inability to maintain control over Phoenix's mind, his attack on Emma rendered her comatose for months. Charles Xavier offered to help, but the Hellfire Club refused his assistance, preferring not to be in debt to the X-Men.
When Emma regained her health, it was the beginning of a dark period for her Massachusetts Academy. First, she failed to recruit a close friend of Kitty Pryde's named Doug Ramsey. Then when Selene became the new Black Queen, Sebastian and Emma felt that Selene could potentially become a threat to their own positions in the Inner Circle, so they conspired to use Emma's prize pupil, Angelica Jones, to assassinate the new Black Queen. Before committing the murder, Jones decided that she was tired of Emma's manipulations and deceit, and threatened to expose the school unless Emma agreed to never interfere with her life again. Things only got worse when Emma attempted to turn things around by recruiting the New Mutants, a team that consisted of many members who had simply lost their will to live. Emma offered telepathic treatment if they would join the Hellions, and with the mental manipulations of Emma's student, Empath, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr (Magneto) accepted. The entire plan came to an end when Magneto discovered the deception and the New Mutants returned to Xavier's school. Emma parted with them peacefully, leaving her invitation open in case they ever decided to return to her school.
Things began to turn around when threats against all mutantkind were rising, and the Hellfire Club allied themselves with the X-Men in a successful joint effort against the super-Sentinel known as Nimrod. Magneto was then offered the position of White King, which he accepted together with the leader of the X-Men at the time, Storm. Emma welcomed the addition and brought Magneto up to date on the club's affairs. Magneto and his students were invited to one of the many Hellfire Club parties, as the New Mutants and Hellions relationship developed a friendly rivalry.
After the X-Men were believed to have died in Dallas, the balance of power within the Inner Circle was endangered. Magneto was left in charge of nothing more than a group of disobedient trainees. Aware that Lehnsherr and Shaw never got along, Emma took her opportunity to manipulate the situation and carefully pit the White King and Black King against eachother. When the rivalry boiled over, the two men knew that only one could remain King, so the matter was put to a vote. Emma managed to drag Selene to her side by promising her a free hand in the Amazonian area, and they voted Sebastian Shaw out of the Inner Circle. Magneto, however, simply lost interest in the club as time passed and departed voluntarily.
Following another encounter with Angelica Jones, Emma left only after ridiculing her former student's idealism and commenting that Jones would some day return to her and apologize.
Again, it was anti-mutant activity that prompted Emma to form an alliance with the X-Men, this time against the time-travelling terrorist, Trevor Fitzroy. Despite the X-Men's good intentions, Fitzroy and his mutant-hunting Sentinels managed to plunge Emma into a deep coma and murdered her Hellions one by one. For the sake of her students' welfare and the school's future, Emma willed control of the Massachusetts Academy to Charles Xavier. During her incapacitation, the school was legally added to the expanding Xavier Institute.
At the sick bay of
Xavier's mansion, Emma was eventually awakened by a short-circuit in the
mansion, and inadvertently caused a body-switch with Robert Drake (Iceman), who
was there to check on her. She fled the mansion in Drake's body and used his
abilities to melt into a river, emerging miles away within seconds near a
building owned by her company. On her own computer system, she learned of her
Hellions' demise and began to doubt her own training methods. She awaited the
X-Men's arrival and reversed the body switch with Bobby.
When the X-Men were infiltrated by the Phalanx, three mutants saved the children from the Phalanx operative called Harvest: Emma, Sean Cassidy (Banshee) and Victor Creed (Sabretooth). The young mutants were brought together to form Generation X, a group to be tutored at Emma's Massachusetts Academy, which had been renamed to the School for Gifted Youngsters, when Xavier's own school became the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning. Emma and Sean were given the positions as co-headmasters of the new School for Gifted Youngsters, but they soon found that their teaching methods clashed. As Generation X's mentor, Emma adopted a relatively less provocative outfit (by her standards), with tight white pants, a zipped-up bodice, a white blazer, and a choker featuring an X symbol.
A short time into Emma's stint as a tutor of Generation X, her younger sister, Cordelia, showed up asking for help. Cordelia claimed that she had befriended a young mutant called Mondo who had been kidnapped by a man named Barrington, and she wanted Emma and the team to help perform a rescue. Emma had her doubts, but since she couldn't use her telepathy on her sister, she couldn't confirm that Cordelia was in fact lying to her. In truth, Cordelia herself had kidnapped Mondo with the intention of giving him to Shinobi Shaw (Sebastian's son) as a present, aiming become the next White Queen of the Inner Circle. It turned out that Shaw wasn't interested, and then Mondo was stolen from her by Barrington. When Mondo was freed, Emma - who was never truly convinced by her sibling - told Cordelia to leave and never come back.
Emma continued to maintain her working relationship with the X-Men. When Drake (Iceman) suffered a massive chest wound in his full ice form, Emma refused to provide any help using her abilities. Instead, knowing that Bobby could actually do it himself, she confronted him with his innermost insecurities: his ex-girlfriend Opal and his father. It was then that Bobby realized he had been holding himself back all this time, and was able to return to his flesh form with his chest intact.
Over the course of her life, Emma has developed a constant habit of utilizing deception and manipulation as a means to achieve her ends, whether she did it with the best of intentions, or for self-preservation and personal ambition. Beneath her cold exterior, she was far more deeply affected by the deaths of her Hellions than many had previously believed. During the Onslaught crisis, she sensed the danger in New York and took her students to a safehouse in Canada to avoid losing another class of young mutants. In the process, she used her telepathy to control them and artificially maintain their happiness. M tried to convince her that taking away the students' freedom wasn't the way to protect them.
Emma later began wearing a white body-suit that was similar in design to the outfits worn by Generation X members, with large golden gloves, boots, and a yellow belt featuring the X symbol. She remained true to her typical dressing habits by keeping the top zipped down far enough to show more skin. Like every other telepath in the world, her abilities were disabled during the psi-war between Elizabeth Braddock (Psylocke) and Amahl Farouk (Shadow King). Sean Cassidy took this opportunity to demonstrate his belief to his students that one cannot rely too heavily on a mutation, and attacked Emma. To his and the students' surprise, Emma demonstrated superior hand-to-hand fighting skills by effortlessly defeating Sean. When she later began giving in to feelings of despair from her lack of telepathic ability, Sean comforted her and convinced her that the abilities don't define who she is. Shortly after, however, her telepathy returned.
In the struggle to divide time between running the school and Frost International, Emma made the mistake of leaving much of her fortune in the hands of her bankers. A series of poor investments costed her so much that it endangered her ability to continue funding the school. Using her returned telepathy to regain the money would've been the most logical and habitual course of action for her, but Sean requested that she not use her abilities in such ways - setting such a bad example for the students would essentially defeat the purpose of maintaining the school. To the surprise of many, she agreed. Instead, she swallowed her pride and asked her older sister, Adrienne, for financial assistance.
Adrienne's mutation gave her the ability of psychometry, the reading of objects. Not having heard from Emma in years, Adrienne turned down the request at first. But upon making physical contact with Emma's purse, Adrienne learned of the real purpose of the school, and felt that she could benefit from having a group of mutant operatives at her disposal. In exchange for the position of headmistress, Adrienne agreed to provide the necessary funds.
In another return of a person from her past, Emma soon encountered the Dark Beast once again, this time in an effort to defend her students against the cruel experiments being performed by Dr.McCoy's alternate self and his group known as Gene Nation.
The deal with Adrienne, however, only worstened as time progressed. She revealed her ulterior motives to hurt Emma in every way possible. She went so far as to design a Danger Room training scenario based on the day the Hellions were killed by Trevor Fitzroy. To top it off, upon leaving the Danger Room session, Emma found Adrienne wearing a White Queen outfit and claiming the title for herself. Weeks later, Adrienne exposed the school's secret of haboring mutants to the public, and planted bombs in the building during a riot caused by concerned parents who wanted to pick their children up from the school. One of Emma's students, Everett Thomas (Synch), was killed by the last of Adrienne's bombs. Unable to use telepathy on her sister, Emma ended it all by killing Adrienne the traditional way: with a gunshot. She also inherited Adrienne's fortune to end her financial problems. Avoiding the police's questions took little effort on her part, she simply mindwiped the interrogating detective. But as always, things were not going to be so perfect. When Generation X learned of the murder, they no longer wanted to be taught by Emma, so the group disbanded and the Massachusetts Academy was shut down.
When Charles
Xavier received word of the School for Gifted Youngsters' closure, he contacted
Emma to take over teaching a class of telepaths at the island nation of Genosha.
Before leaving for the island, Emma decided to take a short vacation. At first,
she naturally felt a sense of guilt for the death of her sister, but over time,
she realized that she only regretted not having done it sooner, before any of
her students could be endangered and killed by Adrienne's actions. After
arriving in Genosha, tragedy struck once again as the Genoshan Holocaust took
the lives of over 16 million mutants - including extremist Erik Lehnsherr, who
has since become a symbol for those who follow his ideologies. Emma survived as
she manifested her secondary mutation: an organic diamond state that's virtually
indestructable (she has no telepathic abilities for as long as she remains in
this form).
With nowhere else to go, and seeing Xavier's way as the only true alternative to the world of intolerance, Emma officially joined the X-Men. After Xavier's sister, Cassandra Nova, exposed his school to the public, the X-Men stepped out of the shadows and have taken their place as public activists for the new issue facing the world: Mutants Rights. Additionally, the Xavier Institute has opened its doors to mutants everywhere, and Charles has launched X-Corporations headquarters around the world to serve as embassies to a human-dominated world; safe-havens for mutants around the globe. As an instructor at the Xavier Institute, Emma took the Stepford Cuckoos - five telepathic identical twins - as her pet project. The others on the teaching staff were given black leather uniforms marked with prominent X symbols, but Emma adopted an outfit that signified her X-Men membership in a way that is more characteristic of her. Above white platform boots, she alternates between long white leather pants and hotpants with a triangular cut at the waist, which - in combination with strategically placed pieces of clothing on her breasts and neck - forms the shape of an X with her skin. She often wears a long white trenchcoat over her outfit.
Emma soon became attracted to another member of Xavier's teaching staff, Scott Summers (Cyclops). Scott had gone through a traumatic experience in which he merged with En Sabah Nur (Apocalypse). Despite having been saved and restored to himself by his wife, Jean Grey-Summers (Phoenix), and son, Nathan Christopher Summers (Cable), he hadn't truly been himself since. Scott felt that for people like Xavier and Jean, experiences like possession are almost nothing more than occupational hazards, so it was difficult to convey his feelings to them. When Jean began to show signs of a return of the Phoenix force, her increased power only drove Scott further away.
During a trip to Hong Kong to retreive the Chinese mutant called Xorn, Emma took her opportunity to make her move, as she attempted to seduce Scott. He refused to cheat on his wife, but he found Emma easier to talk to about his problems after the Nur incident. Labelling herself Scott's sex therapist, Emma began helping him with his relationship problems. Progressively, their relationship led to a "psychic affair" in which Emma would telepathically facilitate the mental exchange of caresses, and Emma eventually fell in love with Scott.
During a riot at the Xavier Institute, one of the Stepford Cuckoos - Sophie - was killed, and the other four blamed Emma for making comments which influenced Sophie to place herself in harmsway. Emma tried to make a new project of problem student Angel Salvadore. She seeked comfort in the arms of Scott Summers while Jean was away, which he felt comfortable with - as long as it remained on the astral plane and not in physical reality. Jean, however, was soon tipped off to their activities by the Cuckoos. She returned in a furious rage, and telepathically tortured Emma by forcing her to remember some of her worst memories. The incident left Emma humiliated and emotionally exhausted. That evening, Emma - while in her diamond state - was shot with a diamond bullet by a student who was under the telepathic control of one of the Cuckoos, Esme. The bullet hit Emma's flaw and shattered her into millions of pieces on the floor of her room.
Detective Lucas Bishop and his partner Sage - both from the separate X-Treme X-Men team - arrived at the mansion to investigate the apparent murder. Meanwhile, Dr.Hank McCoy (Beast) insisted that Emma was not truly dead, and embarked on the seemingly-impossible task of attempting to re-assemble Emma's shattered diamond body. While many have come to dislike Emma for one reason or another, Henry and Logan (Wolverine) have become friends with her. To Hank, she was a good listener who always laughed at his jokes, and one of the few people around him who shared his cultured interests. As for Logan, he shared a similar history with her, having also been involved in a love triangle with the Summers couple. Later, when Jean had regained her composure, she used the power of the Phoenix - together with all the medical knowledge in McCoy's mind - to reassemble the broken body of the woman who had fallen in love with her husband. Emma awoke, but those who conspired in the attempt to kill her remain on the loose...
Known Powers: Emma is an Alpha-level Mutant.
Telepathy: The White Queen is a mutant with various telepathic abilities. She is a Psi of the highest order. She can read minds and project her thoughts into the minds of others.
Organic Diamond Form: ability to transform herself into a flexible, translucent diamond-like substance while retaining mobility. In this form, her skin is as hard as real diamond. While in this form, she becomes cold-hearted and loses empathy for those around her. In this state, food and water are not needed for a undetermined amount of time. Her diamond form does not require a conscious hold and thus will remain until it is voluntarily triggered back.
Known Abilities: The White Queen is highly skilled in electronic theory and electronics and has learned how to build devices that can amplify psionic energy and utilize psionic energy for various effects. She devised the mechanism by which Mastermind projected his illusions directly into the mind of the Phoenix. The White Queen is an above average athlete and has had some training in hand-to-hand combat. The White Queen is trained and excels in astral combat.
Strength Level: The White Queen possesses the normal human strength of a woman of her age, height, and build who engages in moderate regular exercise. In diamond form, the White Queen possesses the strength to lift 50 tons in optimal conditions.